


Agony of Amortentia

by Stuffle



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Amortentia, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Dark, Gen, Harry Potter is a Horcrux, Not a Love Story, Suicidal Thoughts, Trauma, Why Did I Write This?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-19 17:17:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17005830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stuffle/pseuds/Stuffle
Summary: “Do you know what it’s like, to be poisoned to love your worst enemy? When you take Amortentia, you’re not yourself, but yet you are, in the worst ways. You can still make your own choices, but the new desires overwhelm you. There is nothing more important than the target of your manufactured love. Being with them, pleasing them… it brings you so much joy that you’d do anything. You’re self aware, and you know it’s wrong. But you don’t care.”-or -Harry opens up about being held captive by Lord Voldemort.





	Agony of Amortentia

**Author's Note:**

> Voldemort discovers Harry is a Horcrux at the Ministry of Magic. Two years later, Harry is taken captive when he falls off the dragon while fleeing Gringotts. Ron and Hermione still escape the bank with the cup and locket. They eventually meet up with Snape and together, rescue Harry. Harry learns during his captivity that he is a Horcrux, but does not tell Ron and Hermione.
> 
> EDIT (2019-01-30): I have updated this based on the wonderful feedback from RedHorse, cybrid and trashgoblinwizardparty. <3 <3 <3

“Do you know what it’s like, to be poisoned to love your worst enemy? When you take Amortentia, you’re not yourself, but yet you are, in the worst ways. You can still make your own choices, but the new desires overwhelm you. There is  _ nothing _ more important than the target of your manufactured love. Being with them, pleasing them...it brings you so much joy that you’d do anything. You’re self aware, and you know it’s wrong. But you don’t care.”

Harry sits with his two best mates, around the table in their tent. Hermione shakes her head, holding back tears. Ron stares at him in pained sympathy. The only sound is the wind blowing through the trees outside.

Harry takes a deep breath, steeling himself. He has kept this story to himself for far too long. He finally came to the conclusion, after two years of keeping his ordeal and some key facts secret, that he has to let his friend in on some things. The war needs to end.

“I was first given Amortentia after I tried to escape,” he says in a slightly faster pace than normal. He’s rehearsed parts of this in his head. “I resisted, of course. I knew that Voldemort would force it down my throat if I didn’t comply, but I wouldn’t drink it willingly. I fought with all my might, which wasn’t much since I was wandless and weak from exhaustion and dehydration. He easily overpowered me. So I was on the love potion for pretty much the entire time I was gone.”

Harry fiddles with the string on his muggle hoodie, not wanting to see the expressions on his friends’ faces. As terrible as his last memory before the Amortentia kicked in is, he cherishes it. Being able to reminisce on that struggle while in captivity had kept the part of him that knew something was wrong, alive.

“The effects of Amortentia are extremely difficult to fight. I think of myself as having a strong will—how else could I resist the Imperius curse? But the closest I ever came was refusing to take the love potion on the fourth day.” It had been hard to control his actions at all, so he had been forced to choose his battles.

“It didn’t matter. They forced it down my throat again and upped the dose. I took it willingly every day after that.”

Harry risks a glance at his friends. Hermione is staring at him intently, leaning forward with her arms on the table. Ron looks pale in his chair.

“There was a small part of me saying ‘this is very wrong’, but there was a louder voice telling me that taking the potion would please Voldemort and I very much wanted to do that.”

Harry imagines that if he hadn’t had that little bit of self awareness, it would have been much worse. There were a couple lines he didn’t cross, but might have, if he had forgotten who he was. He wonders, not for the first time, if that would have been easier.

“Harry,” Hermione says. “What happened was  _ not _ your fault.”

“Yeah, mate,” Ron says. “When I ate your spiked chocolate in sixth year, I was completely obsessed with Romilda. I don’t think I’d even talked to her before, but my emotions were so overwhelming, I couldn’t think of anything else. If she had told me to take more love potion, I would have.”

Harry hums noncommittally. Ron must think he understands, but his experience with Romilda Vane was nothing compared to Harry’s month with Voldemort.

“There was a time when I might have been able to escape,” he confesses, trying to make them understand. “The Death Eaters were distracted. Someone, Nott I think, had displeased Voldemort and was being tortured. Nott was a bit paranoid. He always carried around a small, emergency portkey. Well, that fell out of his pocket onto the thick rug. Nobody else noticed it and I could have grabbed it. But I didn’t, and after the meeting, I told Voldemort. The portkey might not have worked, but I didn’t even try to use it to escape. I didn’t want to, not really. I enjoyed basking in Voldemort’s presence too much to run.”

“You-Know-Who brought you to Death Eater meetings?” Hermione asks.

Ron is still horrified, but pensive when he asks, “Did you learn anything useful?”

“A bit, but you already know the important stuff, and I need to get this off my chest first. I want you to understand what happened to me. You’re my best mates.”

“Of course. We’re here for you Harry,” Hermione says.

“Voldemort brought me to several Death Eater meetings. It was a way for him to torture me. I still held all the same beliefs about what Death Eaters do—Amortentia is weird and it only overrode my views on Voldemort himself. I was more open minded about his beliefs because how could someone so  _ amazing _ be completely wrong? But his politics were separate enough from him that Amortentia didn’t change all my opinions. I’m not sure if this was for the best or not.”

Harry takes a deep breath and forces himself to drop the hoodie string he’d been fidgeting with. “Listening to the Death Eater reports was bad enough. They would brag about whatever atrocity they had committed that week. Worse though, was watching people be tortured. I’ve never been one to stand by idly when someone is being hurt. It doesn’t matter who it is; I feel the need to help. But I didn’t. As much as I wanted to do something, I wanted to please Voldemort more. I was so infatuated!”

He tries to look at his friends again, but aborts half way through the glance, only seeing Hermione’s clenched hands and the table they rest on. “So I just stood quietly through the meeting, hating myself. It felt selfish, that I would stand by and do nothing because of my own desires, real or not. I mean, I know that I probably couldn’t have done anything to actually help them—I was still unarmed and in a room with many capable wizards and witches—but I’ve rarely let that stop me in the heat of the moment. Voldemort knew all of this and he relished in it.”

“That’s awful,” Hermione says.

Harry chuckles mirthlessly. “That’s not even the most sadistic thing Voldemort did. He  _ hated _ me. Ever since he heard the beginnings of the prophecy, I’ve been his worst enemy. He spent over a decade as a bodiless wraith stewing in his hatred of me.”

“I still don’t understand why he kept you alive,” Hermione says.

“I don’t know,” Harry lies. He shivers as he thinks of the Horcrux inside of him. Even after all this time, that is something he does not want to tell them. “I think he wanted to see me suffer.”

“What-what did he do?” Ron asks.

“Voldemort is...creative. He enjoys emotional anguish more than the physical kind. This was surprising at first, since he is always using Crucio. But he only uses that so much because of its efficiency. For the people he harbors a special hatred towards...he’ll go the extra mile.”

“It sounds like you really know him,” Hermione says.

“Yeah. I think that you obsessively learn as much as possible from someone in a few different scenarios—you love them, they’re your enemy, or they’re abusing you and you can’t get out of the situation. All three apply to Voldemort.”

Harry pauses and the room is silent. The string of his hoodie is a tangled mess.

“I...I hate what he did to me. But more than that, I hate myself because I  _ wanted _ it. I  _ wanted  _ him to torture me. It was awful, of course, but when it happened, I was the center of Voldemort’s attention and my pain made him happy. That was enough for me to like it…”

Harry shifts positions in his chair. He pulls his legs towards himself and wraps his arms around them.

“So you know how it hurts me to touch him...Well, that combined with my desire to do exactly that, amused him to no end. He normally wouldn’t let me—he’s not a very touchy person, you see—but he made exceptions. So, I would gladly touch him. I’d hold his hand and my scar would explode in agony, but my heart would soar.”

It had been exhilarating, kind of like the first time he held hands with Ginny. But even if he doesn’t count the physical pain, the comparison was off. With Ginny it was warm and innocent. His desire to hold Voldemort’s hand had been unquenchable and masochistic.

“Being near the object of my obsessive love and having him want to touch me felt so good. He, of course, only wanted to hurt me, but I was happy that I could provide him with that.”

Harry laughs, but it’s tinged with hysteria. “I welcomed the pain. I’ve never been masochistic before, but I was then. I knew it was wrong, but I hardly cared! In the moment, it was nice…. All the sensations drowned out my self doubt and hatred. But it only lasted a moment before they were back in full force and I was craving the next touch, like a drug addict.”

“Harry, you weren’t yourself,” Hermione says.

Harry looks up. Her expression is fierce and her eyes are glimmering with unshed tears. “I was though. I still knew it was wrong, Hermione. Maybe if I was stronger I could have fought it.”

“You’re one of the strongest people I know.”

Harry sighs and considers stopping there. But he knows that if he stops now, he will never start again. “It gets worse. You see, Voldemort would give me orders, terrible orders, and I would usually do them for no other reason than that I wanted to make him happy. He didn’t even have to threaten me, not really. If I did well, he would ‘reward’ me by letting me touch him.”

Harry laughs bitterly. “If I didn’t please him, he’d leave me alone. I know that doesn’t sound bad, and I’m certainly glad about it in retrospect, but at the time, it really sucked. The first couple times I displeased him, he sent someone else in to Crucio me or something. Under no circumstances is Crucio anything but awful, but when it was over, I cheered myself up by thinking about how my punishment was satisfying for him...Then he figured out that pure isolation was harder for me to bear.”

Harry’s throat constricts. Hermione and Ron are speechless. Of course they are, it’s all so fucked up. Harry has never felt like such a mess before. He struggles to hold back tears. “I’m sorry…”

“Harry! You have nothing to be sorry for,” Hermione says sternly.

“Yeah,” Ron agrees. “I’m glad he left you alone a lot though.”

“No, Ron. I don’t think you quite get it. Leaving me alone was a  _ punishment _ for when I was misbehaving. Even now, I shudder at those memories. Voldemort didn’t like doing it either. He was having too much fun with my torment and it wasn’t as  _ interesting _ if I was out of sight. This fact only made the isolation that much worse. But the thing was, I wasn’t ‘punished’ often. I needed his approval and ‘reward’, so I complied.”

“I did terrible things...I...I….” Harry chokes up and shame courses through him. Part of him agrees with Ron and Hermione. He desperately wants to, but it’s so hard when he remembers consciously deciding to do what Voldemort asked. He had said things, done things, and hurt people…. The only line he hadn’t crossed, was murder, and thank Merlin for that small mercy.

His friends have too much tact to prod him further. Ron is a combination of uncomfortable, pitying, and horrified. He clearly wants to help, but doesn’t know how. Hermione breaks into tears, which causes Harry to start crying too. She throws her arms around him, but Harry flinches, so she quickly pulls back.

“No, please. I could use the hug. I-I’m sorry. It’s just, the last several times I’ve been hugged have hurt immensely.”

“Oh, Harry.” She cautiously wraps her arms around him. Harry forces himself to relax and she pulls him closer, burying her teary face in his hair. He doesn’t mind. She’s warm and Harry can feel the love she’s trying to communicate through the embrace. It’s nothing like Voldemort’s hugs. “What you did while drugged is not your fault. You understand that, right?”

“I don’t know. It’s all too confusing right now.”

“You’ve done nothing wrong,” she says firmly, though the effect is hampered by her crying.

The affirmations do not help him believe. Suddenly, Harry doesn’t want to talk about it anymore. He doesn’t want to confess what he did. He doesn’t want to say what else Voldemort did to him. He is still not up for reliving  _ those memories _ .

He attempts to get his crying under control. He clings to Hermione and tries to breathe deeply.

He’d spent the last couple years trying to make sense of it all. He’d spent most of that time depressed and as alone as he could be while sharing a tent on the run. His friends had been there for him as much as possible, while still respecting his desire for solitude as he tried to process everything.

He knows that what Voldemort did to him was wrong. But that doesn’t undo the damage Harry had done under his orders. He is not as blame free as his friends seem to think. He hates Voldemort and he hates himself.

Despite it all, a part of Harry still harbors affection for the Dark Lord. That piece of him wants to see Voldemort alive and accomplishing his dreams—to see him in those rare moments of actual happiness.

But he won’t let that stop him from doing what needs to be done, and Voldemort needs to be stopped. He suspects that killing Voldemort will be more difficult even, than killing himself. He has a plan for how to accomplish both in one go, one that he won’t reveal until the very end.

Finally, Harry says, “Since you and Snape destroyed the locket and cup, all we have left are two more Horcruxes—the snake and something else. The latter is in Hogwarts and I know a way into the school. We should act soon.” Hermione and Ron share a glance, surely wondering how long he has known this.

Harry ignores the glance, then pauses, realising the double meaning of the words he’s about to say.

“I want to end this.”


End file.
